A question about dying / painting ponies

[flapflap]

Hi everyone,

I recently started on my first custom experiment and I've had some problems with colouring the pony.

First I tried fabric dye (RIT-dye isn't available over here), for anyone who's interested I used the only brand that's commonly available over here called Dylon.
This gave a very nice colour to my pony, but it wasen't at all even! There were blotches were the dye turned out lighter and darker (the pony originally was a very light colour so there may have been stains that were invisible) and the glue residue around the neck also showed very clearly after dying.

Next I tried painting the pony. I read all the info I could find online, and painted the pony with thin layers of very diluted acrylllic paint.
After the second layer dried, I noticed a small scratch on the paint. When I rubbed my fingernail over it, I found I could pull off the entire layer of paint, in a sort of film!

So my questions are:
a) where did I go wrong with the dye? Should I have used this pre-dye suff they sell from the same brand?
b) where did the painting go wrong? Should I have diluted the paint more or less, maybe cleaned the pony better (she might have had some residue from the dye on her)?

Thanks for reading! Any help is appreciated!

 

[Wisp]

I would just buy some Rit online or something. I havent tried it but I have heard some people say spray paint did pretty good.

 

[Mavi]

Dyeing ponies is very unpredictable!

First - clean pony off in Nailpolish remover
Next - wash pony in soapy water to get all the npr off, if there is a residue left ont he pony it WILL affect the colour!

painting ponies is rather tricky, you need to get jsut the right amount of paint/water ration and it's different for every colour lol.

It's acrylic paint. it peels. nothing you can do about it, except try not to rub your nails against it, and spray yhe pony with a sealant. (after it's done)

good luck

 

[LadyM]

What kind of pony was it? I've found the G3s dye much more evently than G1s. Still, there are times I've dyed a G3 only to have a place where the dye "doesn't take".

Good luck with your dying!

~LM~

 

[flapflap]

Thanks for the replies guys!

I started to think that I was making some mistake somewhere, but I guess it just happens. Will be more careful with the nailpolishremover next time (and with removing it!).

 

[Lady Minty]

Just a few more thoughts about painting -- you definitely want to make sure the pony is very clean before you start painting. A good scrub with soap and an old nail brush should work fine. Many baits have various kinds of factory residue (some even feel slightly sticky or greasy) and that sort of thing can repel paint. This is also true of whatever solvent you used to remove the symbols -- any residue of that sort will definitely affect the paint.

You might also want to experiment with brands of acrylic, since different brands have very different properties. It's true that acrylic can chip and peel if it's mishandled, but it really shouldn't be peeling *that* easily.

Also, I'm assuming the paint you're using is the same color as the dye that didn't work out. If it's not, keep in mind that dye can gradually seep through acrylic paint.

~Minty

 

[mckwolfe]

Dye

I'd click on Lady Minty's website link in the above post and check out her tutorials - she has some great info there and I'm pretty sure that's where I found a good tutorial on dying ponies (since I used to get pretty blotchy dye job results also). I got a good overall dye job with the help of her tutorial the last few times around but you really do have to watch out for the residual glue (especially around the neck and sometimes down the front of the chest and around the tail hole). I think someone somewhere recommended using a fine grain sand paper to sand off that glue but I scrapped up the plastic last time I tried that so maybe I wasn't doing it quite right? With paint I try to avoid full body painting whenever possible since I still get some noticeable streaks while doing it - probably and airbrush or mabe spray paint would give a nice smooth coat when done properly. I have an airbrush and it seemed to give a nice paint job for all of the one time it worked before it broke.